Ephemeral
by paperstorm
Summary: Part of my Deleted Scenes series. The tag for 'Death Takes a Holiday', 4x15. Wincest, canon character death.


**Contains dialogue from the episode Death Takes A Holiday, it belongs to Eric Kripke and Jeremy Carver.**

**Part of my Deleted Scenes series. Full list of fics in reading order available on my profile page. They will make more sense if read in order. :)**

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"You think he's ready yet?" Pamela asks weakly, nodding to Dean.

"Let's concentrate on you," Sam says. "We gotta patch you up, okay?"

Pamela smiles and shakes her head. "If I die before I bring Dean back, then he's not comin' back."

"You're not dying," Sam insists. He's not going to let it happen.

"Not yet, anyway." Pamela goes over to Dean and sits on the edge on his bed, one hand still clutching the dry stab-wound. She leans over Dean on her other hand and murmurs the incantation into his ear. Then she stands up unsteadily, and Sam rushes to help her.

"Hey, we just gotta talk to Tessa, that's all. Get her to hold off reaping 'till we get you better."

"I'm pretty sure she's started up again," Pamela grinds out as she sits down on the other bed, and Sam looks down to see blood pouring over her hand.

To his left, Dean draws in a sudden, deep breath and sits up. Sam watches Pamela take a drink from the whiskey he poured her and breathe heavily. His heart races. She's dying, right there in front of them, and Sam's terrified.

"What happened?" Dean asks quickly, in a voice that sounds just as scared as Sam is.

"Dean, where's Tessa?" Sam knows if they just ask the reaper for a favor, she'll give it to them. They saved her life, after all. She owes them.

But Dean frowns and says, "She's …" before trailing off, and Sam's heart sinks.

"Pamela, I'm so sorry," Sam whispers.

"Stop," she says shortly.

Sam can't help himself. "You don't deserve this."

"Yeah, I don't. I told you I didn't want anything to do with this."

Something painful screws itself around Sam's heart. He looks over at Dean, and his brother looks close to tears. Dean hates letting people down even more than Sam does.

"Do me a favor?" Pamela continues darkly. "Tell that bastard Bobby Singer to go to Hell for ever introducing me to you two in the first place."

She coughs suddenly like she can't control it. Sam can't feel his limbs.

"Take it easy, Pamela," Dean says quietly. "If it's any consolation, you're going to a better place."

She turns her head to Dean and grumbles, "You're lying."

Sam doesn't know where people go after they die if they _don't_ go to Hell, but if Pamela ends up where Dean did … Sam's never going to forgive himself for this.

"But what the hell, right? Everybody's got to go sometime." She waves Sam close and adds, "Come here."

Sam leans in so she can whisper right in his ear, and what she says nearly makes his heart stop.

"I know what you did to that demon, Sam. I can feel what's inside of you. If you think you have good intentions, think again."

Sam moves back, the blood coursing a little faster through his veins, and watches in horror as she coughs a few more times, blood dribbling over her lips, leans back against the wall, and then her head slumps to the side and she goes still.

"Pamela?" he asks quietly.

"Pamela!" Dean cries, but it's too late. "What did she say to you?"

Sam doesn't look at him. He can't. He just can't, not after what Pamela said. He's paralyzed at the thought that he's making the wrong decision with Ruby. It doesn't make any sense. Sam's gone over every angle, looked at this from every direction. He _knows _drinking demon blood isn't exactly a good thing, but it seemed like a necessary price for the outcome he'll get in the end. Until now. Now, Sam doesn't know anything.

"Is she gone?" Dean asks, his voice quiet and upset and Sam can't blame him.

He stares at Pamela's motionless body, clenching his jaw against the powerful swell of emotion. He nods shortly, not able to say it out loud, because it can't be happening. Pamela wasn't _part _of this. Sam can't even wrap his mind around it. She can't be gone.

"Fuck," Dean mumbles. He stands up and walks away, and then repeats the curse in a whisper. "What happened?"

"Demon," Sam answers, his eyes still glued to Pamela.

"That him?" Dean asks, and Sam doesn't have to look up to know Dean's looking at the body on the floor.

"Is he still alive?" Sam hears himself ask, the words just barely audible over the blood rushing around his skull. He can't stop looking at her. At their _friend_, who was alive less than a minute ago and now she's just gone, just like that. Forever.

There are footsteps and shuffling behind him, and then Dean's voice says, "No. Probably been dead for a long time."

Sam shakes his head and inhales a shuddery breath. He reaches a trembling hand out and touches Pamela's knee. She's still warm, like she's still _here_, only she isn't. And it's because of them.

"What … what do we do?" Dean breathes. "We can't call the cops. I mean, not as us. We've been lucky lately, but Sam and Dean Winchester turn up in a motel room with two dead bodies and we'll be in jail by sundown."

"This is our fault," Sam says softly, ignoring Dean's question. He can't think about that right now. The only thing he can concentrate on is the lifeless body of a woman who died because of him and Dean, because they dragged her into something that had nothing to do with her. And it's far from the first time this has happened. Sometimes Sam thinks he and Dean are the most selfish people on the planet. They've always got their own mission, their own ends to justify horrible means, and it always seems to be someone else who ends up paying the price for it.

"Yeah, it is," Dean agrees.

"No, I mean …" Sam shakes his head a little, his head aching and his heart speeding up. He might be having a panic attack. "When a hunt goes bad, one of us always feels like it's our fault someone's dead, and then the other one always says it isn't. That we did the best we could, that we can't save everybody. But this time … this one was really our fault."

"I know." Dean sounds as upset as Sam feels, and Sam finally manages to tear his gaze away from Pamela to turn around and look at his brother. Dean's looking back and forth between her and Sam, his forehead scrunched up and his eyes wide and shiny.

"We ruined her life, Dean," Sam continues. His voice wavers and his eyes fill with tears as he thinks about it. "She was probably happy before she met us. And we've known her for, what, a couple of months? And in that time we got her _blinded_, and now we got her killed too?"

Dean rubs his hands over his eyes, and then he puts his mask back on and any trace of sadness slips away like it's that easy for him to turn his emotions off. "Okay. What do we do?"

"Dean," Sam starts incredulously, but Dean cuts him of.

"Yeah, I get it, Sam, we suck. But we can beat ourselves up about that later, okay?" Dean snaps, matter-of-factly. "Right now we got two dead bodies to deal with, so c'mon. Game-face."

Sam's furious with him for about three seconds, and then he realizes Dean's right. It's terrible that he's right, but he is. But Sam has no idea what they're supposed to do. They can't go to the cops as themselves – Dean's right about that too. They've both got records. And if they pretend to be anyone else, they'll have to stick around to answer questions and their fake names and pictures will be put into the system as participants in a murder investigation, and then sooner or later someone will recognize them as the murderers the Feds think they are, and they'll be screwed. Again.

"Alright, we call the cops from a payphone across town," Dean says slowly. "Anonymous tip. And then we get in the car and we drive as fast as we can in the other direction."

"What?" Sam whispers, staring at his brother. Dean has completely lost his mind if he thinks that's even remotely a possibility. "Dean, we can't just leave her here!"

"Well what the hell else are we supposed to do?"

"I – I don't know! Something!" Sam drags the back of his hand over his mouth and his eyes sting with tears again. "We … we don't even know anything about her. If she has a family, a husband, anything. We just kept calling her whenever we needed something, and we never bothered to ask her anything about her life."

"Sam," Dean starts gently, but Sam shakes his head. He can't believe they don't know anything about her more substantial than her last name.

"We _used_ her, Dean. And now she's dead, and it's our fault."

Dean stares at him, his eyes going shiny too as he mouths words that never quite materialize past his lips. For a moment, Sam thinks Dean's going to keep arguing, but then Dean pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and dials. Sam doesn't know who he's calling. He doesn't really care. He turns back to Pamela, and stares at her until he can't stop the tears from spilling down his cheeks. Sam's more than devastated. He's _furious_ with himself. He should _never_ have let Dean talk him into bringing Pamela on board. This was a _stupid_ plan, and Sam is even more stupid for going along with it. They should've just let the damn seal break. It's not like they've been doing a great job of protecting the seals up until now. One broken seal isn't worth as much as an innocent human's life.

In the background of silently berating himself, Sam can hear Dean on the phone with what sounds like Bobby. He explains what happened and when he hangs up, Sam's overheard enough to know they're waiting here until Bobby shows up to clean up their mess. _How_ Bobby's going to explain this to the police, Sam has no idea. But if anyone can get out of this chaos cleanly, it's Bobby.

Dean sits next to Sam on the bed and reaches over to squeeze Sam's leg briefly before letting his hand fall away.

"This shouldn't've happened," Sam mumbles.

"M'sorry," Dean barely whispers. "This is my fault, it was my idea."

Even though Sam had been thinking that same thought just moments ago, when the words come out of Dean's mouth, suddenly Sam's overcome with the need to make Dean believe they aren't true. Dean's dealing with enough, he doesn't need this too. Sam wipes the tears off his face and turns to his brother, his heart breaking even more at the miserable look on Dean's face.

"It isn't your fault," Sam tells him, but he doesn't sound convincing even in his own head. Truthfully, Sam blames himself just as much as Dean, but he doesn't know how to say that and make Dean believe it. So he doesn't say anything.

Dean gets up and walks away again, his shoulders clenching and his hands curling to fists by his sides.

"How long did Bobby say?"

"An hour. Maybe two."

"Should we …" Sam looks back at Pamela, his stomach twisting at the sight of the blood that's still soaking through her shirt and sliding down her chin. "We should lay her down, at least."

"Bobby said not to touch anything."

Sam shakes his head. "We can't – "

"We _have_ to, Sam," Dean says firmly. When Sam looks back at him, Dean looks upset about it, but like he isn't going to change his mind. "Bobby said it needs to look like he came back to his room and found it like this. Like that guy broke in here and attacked her. If we move her, cops'll know someone else was here."

"Damn it," Sam mumbles. His lips tremble so he presses them together, but it doesn't stop the tears from coming again. He inhales shakily, the sadness gripping him so tight it's almost unbearable. He instinctively looks to his brother, because Dean's the one who's supposed to be able to make things like this better, but he knows Dean can't. Not anymore, not when things have gotten this bad.

Dean stares back at him with tears in his own eyes, and he uncharacteristically makes no attempt to hide them. It's hauntingly metaphoric of how bad everything is right now. For a few moments Dean just looks at him, and Sam looks back, and lets the enormity of the situation wash over him in waves that burn like acid through his veins and make the tears come faster.

Unable to sit so close to their dead friend anymore, Sam gets up and climbs onto the other bed, settling against the headboard and pulling his knees up into his chest. There's nothing to do but wait until Bobby gets here, and after what just happened Sam's more than happy to sit here in the poignant, heavy silence of a room with two dead humans in it and hate himself for being the cause of one of them. The other one isn't their fault but Sam still feels it as if it were. After a while Dean walks over and sits beside him, mirroring Sam's position with his back against the headboard and his legs crossed in front of him. Sam drops his head forward, and Dean wraps his arm around him quickly and squeezes his shoulder. Sam shakes his head and tries his best not to fall apart, but he doesn't manage it.

"I know," Dean whispers shakily. He pulls Sam in, kissing the top of Sam's head and trying so hard to be the big brother even though he's breaking too. Sam both loves and hates him for it. "It's …"

He doesn't finish, and Sam clamps his eyes shut. He leans into Dean and clings to him desperately. If he lets go, the whole world might just shatter. "It isn't okay."

"No. It isn't."

"At all."

"I know," Dean repeats, in a tense voice like he's fighting to keep himself together. "I know, Sammy."

It's maybe an hour and a half before there's a knock at the door, and Sam spends it slumped against his brother, trying and completely failing to ignore the growing sense of death in the room that sucks all the oxygen out of it. Watching Pamela die reminded Sam of watching Dean die, and it's too much. Then finally, the slow rap of knuckles against wood startles them both out of the miserable suspension, and Dean gets up quickly to answer it while Sam brushes the lingering tears off his face.

Dean and Bobby whisper for a moment at the door, and Sam can't hear what they're saying but it doesn't matter. When Bobby comes in, he gives Sam a sad, sympathetic look.

"Hey Sam," he says quietly.

Sam looks away and doesn't answer. Dean and Bobby both lost someone today too – it's stupid that Sam's the one everyone pities just because he's the only one of the three of them who knows how to properly express emotion.

Then Bobby goes over to the other bed and looks down at Pamela's body, muttering, "Damn."

"Do you – " Dean begins, but Sam cuts him off.

"We're sorry, Bobby," he says, the weight of blame crushing him. "She was your friend. This is our fault."

Bobby looks at him with kind eyes and shakes his head. "No it ain't. This is the life. It's what we risk every day to save all these poor bastards. It's nobody's fault but the monster that did it."

"She wasn't a hunter," Dean points out gloomily, from the corner by the door where he's still lurking.

Bobby looks at him next, and Sam's reminded of the way things used to be between the three of them – when he was Uncle Bobby, the only real parent either of them ever had. "She was close enough. When you tango with as many spirits as she did, there's always the chance of it going sideways. Pamela knew that. She wouldn't blame you for this."

Sam would love to take comfort in that, except that she outright _said_ she blamed them. And she should.

"You boys get on outta here," Bobby continues, looking back to Pamela.

"You sure?" Dean asks, and Bobby nods.

"I got this. Take back-roads, don't let anyone see that car if you can help it. Least not for a few miles. I'll call when it's all sorted."

"Okay. Thanks, Bobby. We really owe you one this time. C'mon, Sammy," Dean says, and Sam gets up and follows his brother out the door without looking back.

He's numb as they drive, blank and empty and just finished, and Dean is too, if the look on his face is any indication. Dean drives for a while along the zigzag of smaller highways and then he stops in the middle of a dirt road between two bare, brown fields and slams his palm into the steering wheel.

"Son of a _bitch_," he mutters, pressing his lips together and looking away from Sam to hide the tears streaking down his face.

Sam doesn't say anything. There isn't anything he could possibly say to make either of them feel better, so he stares out the window through watery eyes until Dean pulls himself back together enough to keep driving.


End file.
